If you’ve ever wondered what a libertarian curmudgeon’s guide to career and life might look like, well look no further. Charles Murray, the social scientist and best-selling author of such books as Losing Ground (1984) and Coming Apart (2012), has given us such a book in The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead: Dos and Don’ts of Right Behavior, Tough Thinking, Clear Writing, and Living a Good Life (Crown, 2014). Aimed at those in their 20s or those approaching those years, much of the book’s advice is just as applicable to someone in their 30s or 40s, or someone, like me, in their 50s. Interestingly, the book started off as a kind of workplace advice column – really a series of blogs on the American Enterprise Institute’s intranet – for interns and the like at the Washington, DC think-tank where Murray, now 71 years-old, has worked since 1990, turning out one provocative book after another.

Murray gives sound tips on exactly what the book’s subtitle indicates: how to write well, think well, act well, and live well. Each of these areas is challenging, of course, especially for those going from college to adult life. What’s remarkable about the book is how nicely Murray is able to compress so much good counsel into 140 pages. Murray, who isn’t particularly religious (he calls himself an agnostic), respects religion, however, and very much encourages the reader to take it seriously too, even if he may have had a secular upbringing (Wait a minute. Let me scratch that “very” in the proceeding sentence. Murray says we should rarely use it!). He just doesn’t evangelize for a specific faith. That’s fine with me, a Catholic conservative, in a book of this nature.

Much of the soundness of Murray’s little guide-book can be attributed to the fact that he takes an Aristotelian approach to living the good life. So, he includes discussion of what is necessary for living that life, for example, the cardinal virtues, and what that life is all about: happiness (Tips #29—#35). That’s refreshing to see in a self-help book, where those topics are rarely treated or treated poorly. But to call Murray’s book a “self-help” book misleads. Murray dishes out some bracing “no excuses” advice (He is a curmudgeon after all!). No tattoos or body piercings. Dress appropriately. Get rid of “like” as a filler word when you speak. Use words properly. Leave home early and get a job – any job – particularly one that involves serving others. Change how you view time vis-à-vis your career. Acquire and develop the aforementioned moral virtues. Get married – and this may surprise some – try doing so in your 20s. Choose a religious faith and live its traditions. For a cinematic portrayal of the kind of life Murray thinks worth living, the reader is encouraged to watch Groundhog Day, a wonderful piece of pop culture, now over 20 years-old, on what it means to lead a fulfilling and happy life (He notes it’s much easier than slogging through the Nicomachean Ethics!).

For this moral theologian, Murray’s distinction, in tip #27, between being nice and being good is crucial. Anyone can be nice (It can be a “one-off” act), but to live a good life over the long haul necessitates the consistency and coherency that a good character provides – and that comes from having the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, courage, and temperance. Another key Murray distinction is that between “can do” and “may do.” Although Murray is a libertarian who believes, accordingly, in the maximization of personal freedom, he has no trouble at all judging – indeed he says it’s necessary and unavoidable – that certain behaviors are “vulgar, unseemly, dishonorable” (p. 113). Good for him. Young people swim in a sea of relativism and subjectivism today. But Murray is willing to affirm an objective moral order. And he wants you to affirm it too.

Murray hopes that his tips will help you to climb the corporate ladder, to get that promotion, to be successful in your chosen profession, and, most importantly, to be happy in life. But he reminds you that along the way, many of your bosses, managers, supervisors, etc. will be “closet curmudgeons” like him. So, for example, you will have to avoid “sucking up,” using first names (unless given permission), and bad manners. Murray also offers advice on how to properly use (or not use!) strong language (e.g., f-bombs), write emails, and deal with bad bosses. Possibly his best advice for those just starting out today: don’t think of yourself as entitled and don’t think it’s too difficult to “stand out.” The “successful curmudgeons” will notice you! But I also welcomed Tip #29: “Show up.” Show up for family, vocation, community, and faith. That is, don’t neglect these four central dimensions of human existence.

Much of your happiness, Murray argues, will depend on two accomplishments: finding “work that you enjoy” and finding “your soul mate” (p. 101). This is so true. And Murray’s book is a fine guide to doing both. It should get you thinking about those two areas in ways you may have never done so before. It did so for me. But there’s also much fun packed into all this serious advice.

So you can see that Murray’s book is more than a career guide on how to “get ahead” – to help you avoid those lethal workplace mistakes that can either prevent you from being hired or even get you fired. It’s also a practical toolkit for how to lead a worthy and worthwhile life as you’re getting ahead. It’s ideal for your son or daughter whose transitioning from their late teens to young adulthood, for book study groups, or high school business and vocational courses. I read it in two sittings during the evening hours. I hope you read it too.

In her first book, Personal Commitments (1986), Farley reflected the consensus of many religious ethicists that traditional certitudes and platitudes call for re-examination in light of individual experience. A task of the era was to reconsider the role of procreation in marriage, given the impact of Humanae vitae, and the rapid expansion of social roles of women beyond the domestic sphere. Farley and others reached the conclusion that sexual and marital morality is more defined by commitment than by childbearing. The latter represents a realm of fulfillment and responsibility, but it does not establish a normative requirement for all sex acts and sexual loves. While taking commitments, covenants and fidelity very seriously, Farley envisions conditions that could justify changing and breaking commitments, including marriage. Her focus was the difficulty of personal integration and responsibility, given the realities of change and of circumstances beyond individual control.

Worldwide, sexuality is defined as much by kinship and childbearing as it is by self-expression, mutual love and pleasure. Yet despite great variety in sexual realities and experiences, Farley offers a norm for all sexual unions: “just love.” This means respect, freedom, mutuality, equality, commitment, “fruitfulness” as responsibility for a wider community and social justice as social and legal respect for all in matters of sex, marriage and family. Farley recognizes that commitment as a sexual norm is highly “problematic” today, if not “impossible.” The book reaffirms her conviction that commitment is necessary to sustain love and desire and to bring sexual love to its greatest joys.

I will offer some comments and criticisms of the thought expressed in these two paragraphs above.

I. What’s “Just Love” Got to Do with It?

First, as we’ve seen, Cahill says there’s the idea that “sexual and marital morality is more defined by commitment than by childbearing,” according to Farley and others. While procreation is important, “it does not establish a normative requirement for all sex acts and sexual loves.” Yet, despite the elevated role of commitment over children in Farley’s sexual ethics, Cahill notes that Farley foresees situations that “could justify changing and breaking commitments, including marriage.”

Secondly, Cahill tells us that Farley’s “norm for all sexual unions” is “just love.” Again, this entails “respect, freedom, mutuality, equality, commitment, ‘fruitfulness’ as responsibility for a wider community and social justice as social and legal respect for all in matters of sex, marriage and family.” But this norm is really no norm at all. It is vague beyond anything that would be of use to someone to help form his or her conscience. How, for example, do we define what is “mutual” or what is “social justice”? The characteristics of this norm recall the fuzzy, content-less criteria (e.g. “creative growth toward integration”) put forth by the authors of the dissenting work, Human Sexuality: New Directions in Catholic Thought (1977), a study commissioned by the Catholic Theological Society of America and edited by the Reverend Anthony Kosnik. At the time, both the U.S. Bishops and the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith severely criticized this book (http://www.doctrinafidei.va/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19790713_mons-quinn_en.html).

Moreover, a moral norm is meant to guide our free choices so that they are made in conformity with moral truth. But Farley’s “just love” norm includes the notion of freedom (Maybe to speak of “consent” would be better). Nonetheless, “respect,” “equality,” and so on should characterize all non-sexual human relationships: for example, relationships between parents and children, brothers and sisters, casual friends of the same or opposite sex, and so on. But marriage, being an intimate sexual friendship of a very unique kind calls for moral criteria suitable to the kind of relationship that it is: one between a man and a woman that is permanent and open to the transmission of new human life. While respect would definitely be included in the criteria, much more would be as well such as the norm that the connection between the unitive and procreative goods of sexual intercourse is not to be intentionally violated.

Finally, Cahill shows us that Farley’s understanding of “fruitfulness” is more figurative than literal – not so much physical fecundity as spiritual fecundity. This explains away fecundity or procreation as a basic value, however, rather than describes the central role it has in marriage. Indeed, it is procreation that provides the very rationale – biology teaches as much – for why marriage involves the two sexes to begin with and for why it is to be life-long. In saying this, we’re not implying that procreation is a higher value or the only value in marriage; we’re simply pointing out that it is what defines marriage to be the kind of intimate bodily relationship that it is – different from all of the other friendships that men and women have.

II. A Halfhearted Commitment

But then, we recall that Farley does not limit genital sexual expression to marriage or to one man and one woman. That is, pre-marital sex can be morally legitimate, as can homosexual or lesbian sexual relationships. There’s nothing intrinsic to her “just love” norm that would exclude any of these. What’s crucial for Farley is that these relationships be respectful, involve mutuality, achieve equality, etc.

Although Farley gives the notion of “commitment” a more significant role over “fruitfulness,” we’ve seen that her understanding of commitment is a rather pale image of its traditional understanding: it does not include absolute permanency. Commitments can “change” and even be “broken.” Marriage is not immune to this dissolution and thus divorce is, potentially, a morally good choice.

Farley also questions, as we saw, whether “commitment” (or covenant) can function as a credible “sexual norm” in today’s world. In this context, Cahill states that Farley’s “focus was the difficulty of personal integration and responsibility, given the realities of change and of circumstances beyond individual control.” This seems to be a fancier way of saying, “We can’t get our lives together and be responsible adults, and so, given all of the external pressures working against us that are outside our control, we don’t have to live up to the objective norms of sexual morality.”

Conclusion

Cahill informs us that Farley’s first book had as its goal the criticism of traditional sexual morality in the light of “individual experience.” But our human experience, it must be noted, is an experience not only of Redemption but of the Fall – of brokenness, of sin (original, personal, and social). Therefore, the Catholic Church has insisted that divine revelation must judge the authenticity of personal experience rather than the other way around.

As well, Cahill observes that Farley is not willing to make “childbearing” [I would say procreation] “a normative requirement for all sex acts and sexual loves.” This is the most revolutionary, if not new, move that Farley makes in the practical order, for it “pulls the rug out from under” the entire wholistic, love-and-life together sexual ethic of the Church. Not only is contraception permitted in Farley’s view, but so too – by a logic both revisionists and traditionalists grasp – masturbation, sodomy, and other sexual perversions.

No wonder the CDF stepped in. It was right to do so, even if long overdue.

This is the 50th anniversary of a remarkable book. And chances are you have never heard of it, much less read it. But it is one of the most important books in ethics/practical ethics of the second half of the 20th century. Moreover, it took great intellectual fortitude to write it because its author wrote during the climate of budding dissent in the Catholic Church. The book I speak of is moral theologian Germain Grisez’s Contraception and the Natural Law. Published by the now-defunct Bruce Publishing Co. in 1964 (The moral theologian William E. May was an editor there at the time), the book of almost 250 pages was written in an incredibly short amount of time (about two months) and published before (now Judge) John T. Noonan’s more widely known and celebrated, Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists (Harvard University Press, 1965), although it wouldn’t appear until early 1965. While Noonan, in both the book and as a member of the Pontifical Birth Control Commission, would argue for a change in the Catholic Church’s perennial teaching condemning contraception, Grisez stood firm amidst the winds of change in the early 1960s and developed a new and sounder argument against the practice.

The book itself was composed of eight chapters, an epilogue, and an appendix. Grisez would critique inadequate arguments against contraception in chapter 2 (e.g., the “perverted faculty”) while also treating three understandings of morality in chapter 3 (“situationism,” “conventional natural-law theory,” and his own theory of “practical principles”), before showing in chapter 4 why contraception is always morally wrong (intrinsically evil). He would also respond, like a good philosopher, to various objections.

Grisez’s book is a thorough philosophical treatment of the issue. The central thesis it defends (in Ch. 4) is this: “For one who engages in sexual intercourse directly to will any positive deed by which conception is thought to be prevented, or even rendered less probable, is intrinsically and seriously immoral.” (p. 12). Those were “fighting words” back then, as they are today.

In essence, Grisez’s Contraception would first refute ethical theories that would justify contraception based on the consequences of one’s actions, and then develop an argument against contraception that would demonstrate that the intrinsic evil of contraception was not to be found largely in the fact that contraception violated the physical integrity of the act, as some traditionalists held, but that it was an act directed against the “procreative good.”

In chapter 4, on p. 98 of his treatise, Grisez expressed his new argument against contraception in syllogistic form:

Major: For one who has sexual intercourse to act in a way which presupposes an intention opposed to the procreative good is intrinsically immoral.Minor: Contraception is an act – the prevention or lessening of the likelihood of conception by any positive deed directly willed for this purpose – of one who has sexual intercourse which presupposes an intention opposed to the procreative good.Conclusion: Contraception is intrinsically immoral.

Grisez, now 84 years old, would rigorously refine both his argument against contraception and his ethical theory over the next 50 years and apply it to other moral issues (e.g., abortion, capital punishment, and nuclear deterrence). This theory, which is now often called “the new natural law theory” (I prefer to say “the basic human goods theory” of natural law), would influence countless other scholars such as moral philosophers John Finnis and Joseph Boyle, who would also become some of his earliest and closest collaborators. Grisez would also engage in the work of moral theology, beginning in the late 1970s while teaching at Mt. St. Mary’s University, where he has emeritus status today. This work would bear fruit in the massive three volumes of The Way of the Lord Jesus. It too was a collaborative effort that was assisted by William E. May and many others.

Grisez see his ethical theory as a free-standing account of the natural law, but one firmly rooted in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. Whatever one’s view of the theory (I am mostly in the Grisez camp), one must be impressed and grateful for Grisez’s “lone wolf crying in the wilderness” witness against contraception then and now – none of which was or is fashionable in the culture or academia.